I think the point is Walmart is able to pay at a low enough rate that it must be effectively subsidized by the government. Walmart then plays into it as a further benefit “they” provide.
The government is setting the price floor for wages. If that price floor falls below the point at which the government will offer benefits to people, then it isn't Walmart that is being subsidized.
I would prefer that nobody who works 40 hours a week (tops! I'd be happy if the number was less) earns less than the US poverty level for a family with 1 or 2 children (undecided over which). As a matter of law.
I’m sure my 16 year old son would have loved that.
And everyone arguing that a company doesn’t deserve to exist if it can’t profitably pay more, is posting on a site funding money losing companies that couldn’t exist if they actually had to make a profit.
If you want to advocate the position that there's some age where the correlation between work and income can or should be looser, be my guest.
For me, the bottom line is that spending 40 hours a week doing something that requires no skill should still entitle the employee to be able to live a basic life. Further, that it should require only one person in a family to do that work in order for the family do live a basic life. If the person wishes to earn more then they will need to acquire more skills one way or another.
I do not believe there can be any moral justification for somebody receiving 40 hours of someone's effort (even an unskilled effort) and not giving that person enough for a basic life. I don't care what the age of the person doing the work is, and yep, if the company cannot do that, it doesn't deserve to exist - it doesn't do anything valuable enough to pay its employees adequately, so it can disappear and nobody except the owners will care.
Portland Oregon is #25 on the list of the 50 largest metro areas in the US. A living wage there is about $44/hour for a family of four. Should that be the minimum wage in Portland?
For the purposes of my answers, I am taking your cost-of-living values as they are. I am not convinced they are correct, but willing to assume that they are.
> Should the minimum wage there be $48/hour after taxes?
Yes.
> A living wage there is about $44/hour for a family of four. Should that be the minimum wage in Portland?
Yes.
What's your alternative? "Oh sorry, your job is requires so little skill that even though you could just spend 40 hours a week doing it, you will need to find at least another 20 hours a week doing something else to be able to afford a basic life"
So you want to raise the minimum wage of everyone in San Francisco to $131K a year? How is that going go work out for inflation?
You want to raise the minimum wage of everyone in Portland to $91K year?
Let’s say the average grocery store has 6 people working every hour for 16 hours a day and 355 days a year. Their labor cost would be $1.465 million. Grocery stores already operate on thin margins (https://www.biz2credit.com/blog/2020/05/22/grocery-store-pro...) are you prepared to pay enough for the labor cost of the entire food chain to quadruple? From the people in the field, delivery truck drivers, etc?
It could mean that, but in all likelihood it means that some YC funded companies make huge amounts of money for YC that sufficiently balances the losses that they keep doing it.
That’s not how VCs make money. They make money based on “exits” either via acquisition or IPO. Over the last few years, most companies had exits without ever showing profitability.
Joe Bob’s Burgers don’t have the luxury of losing money hoping they can survive long enough to find the “greater fool” either via acquisition or IPO.